The Unicorn

by Iris Murdoch

  The train began to slow down and Effingham’s heart quickened, with the delight and fear of arrival. Surely he was harmless and surely all would be as before; and yet too each year he had the sense of moving a little closer to the centre, whatever the centre might prove to be. He put his hand on the door. A dazzling sunshiny haze hung like a curtain over the little derelict station where a single figure was waiting on the platform. Dear Alice. Poor Alice.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘There’s a new girl over there called Marian Taylor.’

  ‘Over where?’

  ‘Over there, Effie. She’s been engaged as a sort of companion for Hannah. She’s quite educated, and used to teach French in a school or something.’

  ‘How do you know all this? Have you been calling on Hannah? Bless you for that.’

  Alice had in the last two years set up a tenuous visiting relationship with her rival which rather pleased Effingham.

  ‘No. I just couldn’t bring myself to call. I don’t know if she knows I’m here. Denis told me.’

  Alice maintained, toward the delinquent Denis, a protective attitude which Effingham found incomprehensible and irritating. He could not think how she could bear to see the little rat after that incident.

  ‘Oh. Hannah said something vague in a letter about a girl, but I thought it was a maid. I’m glad she’s got some more female company. Since you’re falling down on your job.’

  ‘It’s not my job. As you know, I only went to see Hannah out of curiosity. I don’t dislike her, one couldn’t, but we just don’t get on. Anyway, it’s a bit improper. But this girl, yes. Pretty and so nice. You must meet her, Effie. I said I’d ask her over.’

  Alice is jealous already, thought Effingham, as he listened to her over-urgent tones. She sees every woman as a menace, as after me. The idea of every woman after him was not displeasing. ‘Where did you come across this girl?’

  ‘She was down on the beach trying to pluck up courage to get in the sea, but she didn’t manage it.’

  ‘Sensible child! I hope you haven’t been swimming again?’

  ‘No, I’ve given up swimming since I got to look like a porpoise. That reminds me, I dreamt about you last night. We were swimming together. And not just swimming. Yes. Never mind.’

  It was odd, the life one lived in other people’s dreams. He wondered if Hannah dreamt about him. He had never asked her.

  ‘You are a little plumper. But it suits you.’ Poor Alice was now getting really thick-set: a stout, tweedy, doggy middle-aged woman. Perhaps being a professional gardener made one look like that anyway: all that stooping with feet wide apart.

  They had just arrived in Alice’s Austin Seven from the station and they were in Effingham’s bedroom. His big suitcase was half unpacked on the bed. He noted with affectionate annoyance the mess of bric-a-brac with which Alice had lovingly adorned his room: shells on the mantelpiece, china cats and dogs, small and useless cushions, embroidered mats, and chipped saucers out of fine tea-sets. Devoid of taste, Alice was an indefatigable hunter of antique shops, from which she would come home laden with small cracked objects which she had got triumphantly cheap. Alice was mean with money. And her domestic activities had the air of a sort of elephantine play. Perhaps that too was something to do with being a gardener. ‘How nice you’ve made my room. And what a lovely little thing of wild flowers. Are they bog flowers?’

  ‘Yes, they’re those funny carnivorous flowers. I don’t suppose they’ll eat you. I wish we had some decent garden flowers, but the whole damn garden is blown away. I must have a go at it again, now that I have time, yes.’

  ‘Time-?’

  ‘I’ve given up my job. Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘Why ever - V

  ‘Clearing the decks for action. It’s seven years, you know!’

  ‘You surely don’t believe that - But you’re jesting. Why really?”

  ‘Well, Father’s getting on, you know. And he’s practically finished his book.’

  ‘He’s clearing the decks for action too!’

  ‘And when he finishes it - I think he’ll suddenly get much older. It’s been with him such a long time. It will be like the end of his life.’

  Effingham was chilled. He had never known Max without that book. What indeed would he do afterwards?

  ‘Anyway,’ Alice went on, ‘he can’t really be left alone in the winter nowadays. You’ve no idea what it’s like here in the winter. Well, you have, but you’ve never stayed long. The maids are splendid, of course, but they can’t be expected to take the responsibility. Now Pip and I will both be here -‘

  ‘Pip?’

  ‘He’s given up his job too, yes. Didn’t I tell you? Just brought out a book of poems, I expect you saw it. Now he wants to spend two years on poetry. Thinks he could do something remarkable.’

  ‘I see. All three of you. You’ll convince me something is going to happen.’ Effingham had indeed seen a favourable review of the poems, but he could not bring himself to look at them. He knew beforehand that they must be feeble.

  A handsome red-haired maid put her head round the door. The maids at Riders were all red-heads, belonging to one of the many Norman ‘pockets’ to be found along that much-ravaged coast.

  ‘Oh, Carrie, do come in, dear,’ said Alice. ‘Carrie is going to lay your fire. You’ll need it, it gets so cold in the evenings now. Come along to my room and look at the view.’

  ‘Hello, Carrie,’ said Effingham. He shook hands with her and saw her blush. Carrie was very fond of him. All the maids were so charming. He thought fleetingly of Denis Nolan. As he left the room he caught a glimpse of the bowl of carnivorous flowers and thought how nasty they looked.

  Effingham’s room faced the sea. Alice’s room had the view across the valley to Gaze. Effingham was for a moment absorbed in the sudden vision of the castle, into the mystery of its real presence. It was so powerful an object in his imagination that the sight of it in reality, faded and diminished, always gave him a slight shock. Then a movement caught his attention and he saw Pip Lejour below on the terrace, with his retriever dog Tadg at his feet, his glasses levelled on the house opposite. Effingham stood back with a frown.

  ‘Pip is such a romantic,’ said Alice. She wanted to defend Pip against Effingham’s irritation.

  ‘Hannah makes romantics of us all.’ He did not intend to hurt Alice. He smiled a smile of conciliation.

  ‘I wish I could make a romantic of you, Effie. All right, don’t panic, I’m not going to start.’

  Effingham surveyed her short straight well-powdered nose, her short downy upper Up, her short tucked fair hair. Her cheeks were more fleshy now. She was no longer a pretty girl; but she was certainly a handsome imposing middle-aged woman, born to be the pillar of something or other. What a pity she had never married. As he looked her strong face melted and kindled before him, and he was ashamed for her vulnerability. ‘You’re blushing, Alice!’ He leaned forward.

  ‘Don’t, Effie. I should have told you at the station. I’ve got an awful cold.’

  Damn, thought Effingham, now I shall get her cold. It was just like Alice to have a cold. He did not want to appear before Hannah with a cold. He did not want to give Hannah a cold. He did not want to see Hannah with a cold. He kissed Alice on the lips.

  She gazed at him for a moment with the old hungry persecuting gaze. Then she smiled, looking like her brother. ‘Decent of you! Now come down and see Father.’

  As Effingham turned he saw what seemed like a white form on the bed. Then he saw that the bed was covered with shells. Alice had a great collection of local shells, to which Effingham had occasionally contributed. ‘You’ve got all your shells out. How odd they look. Like a girl made of shells. I remember a girl made of flowers in a story once, but I can’t recall a girl made of shells. This is a new enchantment.’

  To put a spell on you! Let me give you some.’ She picked up a handful of the smaller shells and dropped them into his pocket. They went downstairs.


  Out on the terrace the golden retriever came rushing up to Effingham, planting its paws upon his waistcoat and then rolling upon its back in a fluffy whirl of smiling mouth and waving paws. This homage took a moment to deal with. ‘Hello, Tadg. Hello, Pip.’

  ‘ “Lord, behold us with Thy blessing, once again assembled here.” Hello, Effie.’

  While Alice got plumper, Pip seemed to get slimmer and slighter. He was a wisp of a fellow now, with a soft silky suggestion of hair upon his balding head, and a moist mobile mouth, his neat face a diminished version of Alice’s. His narrow blue-grey eyes continually flashed and widened at private jokes. The ramparts were manned.

  ‘Have a dekko?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Surely Pip must know by now what he thought about that particular error of taste. ‘Just off to see Max. See you later.’

  He had a last glimpse of Pip’s small head and behind it, in shadow now, the vista of Gaze with the fuchsia-red hillside below it and the dark line of the bog above.

  ‘I’ll leave you here,’ said Alice. Like a priestess leading him into some higher presence, she paused on the threshold. He was touched by her always slightly absurd delicacy about his relations with her father.

  Max’s study faced inland with a view of stony nibbled grass and dwarfish bushes and the yellow-grey hump of the Scarren beyond. The bog was invisible.

  Effingham reached the door. He had a sense of painful sobering urgency, a sense of being abruptly pulled together or recalled to himself. He respected after all Max’s concern with ultimate things. In a way, Max had lived for him, had lived his other life. He had stored up so much of his good in this place and he found it, on each return, however his faith in between might waver, fresh and indubitable. Then he smiled at his sudden trepidation. He was glad after all to know that the old magic had not failed. He knocked softly.

  He waited, and then heard a sound which was familiar from long ago and like no other noise that he knew. A deep hoarse chanting came from within. He opened the door.

  There was a haze of cigar smoke. Oblivious of him, Max was sitting in a twilight with his back to the door, the curtains half drawn. He was singing to a plain-song lilt of his own a chorus from Aeschylus.

  Effingham sat down behind him. He fingered in his pocket the sharp crushed fragments of the shells which Alice had given him. He must have broken them nervously somewhere on the way along. He followed the healing familiar lines.

  Zeus, who leads men into the ways of understanding, has established the rule that we must learn by suffering. As sad care, with memories of pain, comes dropping upon the heart in sleep, so even against our will does wisdom come upon us.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I’ve never seen so many hares around,’ said Alice. They all seem quite mad too.’

  ‘It isn’t their month,’ said Effingham. ‘Been fishing lately?’ He hardly knew what he was saying. It was the next morning and he was walking over to see Hannah. He felt homicidal with irritation against Alice, who had announced that she would walk over with him.

  ‘Hardly,’ said Alice. ‘The trout are so-so, and it’s too early for grayling. Have to wait till St Martin’s summer.’

  There were indeed a lot of hares, darting and capering on the vivid green hillside below the bog. Effingham and Alice were walking by the inland footpath which passed above the village, crossing the stream at a higher level, where it descended in a series of small waterfalls from its dark bog-source. A pair of buzzards wheeled overhead in the sunny air.

  The hillside was still scarred. A wide band of black boggy soil and a strewing of stone showed where the great torrent had descended. The innocent stream now meandered in the midst, dark as the earth itself, leaping into light as it fell. They crossed, stepping from one round glinting boulder to another. Effingham absently gave Alice his hand.

  His first meeting with Hannah on each occasion disturbed him terribly. When he was absent from her he felt almost perfectly serene about their relationship. Only when he approached her again, the real, breathing, existing Hannah, did he realize how large a part of the fabric was contributed by his own imagination. That, in some deliciously undefined way, she loved him, was even in love with him, was, in absence, a dogma. In presence it had to undergo the ordeal of being changed into a fact. Though even in presence Effingham later found the combination of the fantastic and the real quite felicitous and natural. Sex, love, these were after all so largely things of the imagination. Only the first encounter was alarming.

  There was, too, always the possibility that he would find that something had changed. After all, so strange a situation could not go on forever. Or could it? It was not that he really pictured Hannah as a star which gets smaller and smaller and then explodes. He did not see any gathering violence; he saw rather the opposite, the unnerving disappearance of personal will. It was not that he expected that Hannah would suddenly break out or suddenly demand to be rescued; though if she ever did then he must somehow be adequate to her need. But no, he told himself, she would never ask that. Yet the situation would have to alter, and who would alter it? Or who would begin to alter it; since once it began to alter the figures so strangely woven into the quiet tapestry would themselves jerk into unpredictable life. Effingham recalled Alice’s remark about ‘clearing the decks for action’, and he shuddered, thinking how disagreeable any sort of action might turn out to be. Of course he did not believe in the legend of the seven years. Still it had been a long time - for somebody. For Peter Crean-Smith, for example. He shuddered again.

  ‘Why, Tadg!’ The dog came tearing up to Alice, smudged her skirt with two boggy paws, and scudded round her. ‘Pip must be near. He went out early to shoot.’

  A distant cry came from farther up the hill and a figure could be seen descending the rocks on the far side of the stream where the Scarren spilt itself in a series of yellowish screes down the grassy slope. As Pip came nearer, the heavy shotgun under his arm, it was apparent that he was carrying something else as well, which turned out to be a brace of pheasants. Effingham was displeased. The country as far as eye could see belonged to Hannah. Pip’s casual poaching seemed to Effingham petty and tactless. Pip quite failed to measure up to the potential grandeur of his role.

  Alice, who knew what Effingham felt about the poaching, said, ‘Oh, Pip, you said you were going up the coast for barnacle geese I’

  ‘Didn’t get up early enough.’ He grinned at Effingham. ‘Off to pay homage, eh, Effie?’

  Effingham said nothing. He felt for a moment almost faint with suppressed violence. He would never understand Pip. He looked at the boy now, as he turned gaily back to his sister to tell her about some ravens he had seen on the Scarren. Pip still looked absurdly young in spite of his baldness. His long neck and small head emerged from a dirty tattered shirt. His cheek was ruddy with sunshine, and girlish smooth. His face twitched and twinkled as he talked and he kept casting roguish glances at Effingham. The gun leaned against his thigh. The gun suited him. Effingham, who had a horror of firearms, apprehended this with a mixture of fascination and horror. Pip belonged to some quite other race than himself; and for that instant he saw the boy, not as an absurd and insensitive youth, but as some slim archaic Apollo, smiling, incomprehensible and dangerous.

  The dead birds dripped blood. Effingham shook himself and was about to announce that he was going on, when over Pip’s shoulder he became aware of a scene which was coming into focus on the hillside below the bog. A man and a girl were coming along the path from Gaze; and a moment later he had recognized the man as Denis Nolan.